Building Innovation in Schools

I love to give tours of our school and show what we have built. We get a lot of people that come through and want to see what we are doing. Because I believe in collaboration and because our own learning was dependent on school visits to other innovative sites, I am open to anyone visiting. But I often get questions and comments that leave me a little discouraged. They are often something like, “Can you share your written model with us?” or “ This should be replicated in fill in place.” or “Have you thought about scaling this to a whole district or multiple charters or across an entire county?” Etc., etc., etc.

All of these questions and comments are great in their intent. Some of my answers- yes I have thought about scaling and replicating our school and changing the whole education system for that matter. But the problem with these comments is that they seem to want a quick fix. They want a manual, or a bottle with the secret formula and it isn’t that easy. If it was- I would be selling you bottles right now (or giving them away if I really wanted to change the world).

Innovations and Startups

The reason that disruption generally happens at the startup level instead of the corporate level is that startups are systematically built for innovation and corporations are built for management. Startups can focus on a specific problem and build solutions, learning as they go, and pivoting quickly. Corporations are giant machines that have so many processes just to keep things moving. They struggle to function like startups. Some startups eventually become big corporations and they often lose their innovation magic. It is difficult to function like a startup at a certain size. Google and others are trying to structure to keep themselves primed for innovation. Whether they will be able to pull it off remains to be seen.

School Districts = Big Corporations

This isn’t a bad thing- it just is. School districts are built to manage the education of large numbers of students. Their systems resemble big corporations more than startups so innovation is difficult. And that doesn’t even consider the legislation that drives public education or the issues with teacher training programs and lack of exposure to innovation. Parents, teachers, and others see school as they remember it- and they repeat the process.

How we innovated

Don’t get me wrong- innovation is totally possible in schools. We did it and it can be scaled and done elsewhere, but it isn’t a template or a manual. We were able to do it because we able to function like a startup. The system can be replicated so that innovation can happen- but the innovation must be born of the system and environment, not copied from something existing somewhere else.

Keys to innovation

1.    Supportive district. We had a school district that allowed us to function in all the ways presented below. We were allowed some autonomy and the opportunity to try different things. Generally, districts push schools for uniformity, but we were allowed to build a model that learned and changed as it went. We had a supportive superintendent and school board that allowed us to try something different.

2.    Community support. Business partners, higher education partners, parents, and others rallied around our mission. We were able to get different people in the building with experiences outside of education. This allowed us to learn from the industry, from innovators, and from stakeholders who are usually silent. It allowed us to build something from the fertile soil that was already around us.

3.    Talent. Teachers, office staff, administration- you need people who want to do something different and are talented enough to pull it off. Our staff puts in a lot of work- but they want to do it. They are entrepreneurial educators. They were teachers committed to doing something completely different. And we couldn’t have built this without them. If we weren’t given the ability to hire and train innovative staff, this school would not be what it is today.

4.    Training and learning. We went to the d.school at Stanford, to innovative schools throughout the state, to curriculum trainings in Chicago. I went to Babson College to learn entrepreneurship education. We worked together, planning, learning, scrapping everything, measuring, trying something new, and becoming real entrepreneurs. We risked- some of us for the first time in a long time.

5.    Space. We were able to build an innovative space, with innovative furniture, that prompted collaboration and creativity. We were able to build a culture of innovation.

6.    Money. A lot of the stuff above requires green paper. We couldn’t have done it without a few Benjamins.

7.    The opportunity to rethink education. We were able to rethink the why, how, and what of education. We deconstructed the industrial model and looked at what were today’s work outcomes and how could we train students for a changing world. This allowed us to build something beyond educational standards and to really focus on long-term outcomes that would create innovative change makers.

So those are some of the parameters that can build an innovative system. It is far more complex than a simple 7-step process, but it can be done. The education system is ripe for disruption. Ken Robinson says it will take a grass roots effort- school by school. I believe it can be done at a larger scale, but only if we setup startup systems. Innovation is only born in an environment that promotes it. Traditional systems will only build traditional schools.

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